Reagan really did tax most Americans more than Barack Obama

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from Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_11/some_socialism041494.php


Those who argue that America has been drifting into socialism, redistributionism, and confiscatory tax policies aimed at “successful” people in recent decades should be compelled somehow to read the following graphs from a piece by Binyamin Applebaum and Robert Gebeloff in the New York Times:

Most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income. more . . .

Within the category of federal taxes, moreover, the share of revenues collected from relatively progressive income levies has steadily declined as compared to those collected from highly regressive payroll taxes . . .


read more: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_11/some_socialism041494.php

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. Before Raygun you could write off the interest on all of your loans

Car, credit cards, etc. unemployment benifits were not taxed. An ordinary worker would reach the cap on SS in about May. Raygun really fucked over working people! He also closed the mental hospitals while Guv of Ca. Giving rise to the teabaggers.

[Turbineguy]

2. All Hail

Saint Ronnie! I get a little choked up inside. Makes me kinda miss Hitler and Stalin. Yeah, I miss Goebbels too!

Luckily we have Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea party to fill us in on the real truth!